Remote Sensing-Based Monitoring of Postfire Recovery of Persistent Shrubs: The Case of Juniperus communis in Sierra Nevada (Spain)
Metadatos
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MDPI
Materia
Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA) Shrubs Juniperus communis Monitoring Persistence Segmentation Sierra Nevada
Fecha
2022-12-22Referencia bibliográfica
Blanco-Sacristán, J.; Guirado, E.; Molina-Pardo, J.L.; Cabello, J.; Giménez-Luque, E.; Alcaraz-Segura, D. Remote Sensing-Based Monitoring of Postfire Recovery of Persistent Shrubs: The Case of Juniperus communis in Sierra Nevada (Spain). Fire 2023, 6, 4. [https://doi.org/10.3390/fire6010004]
Patrocinador
European Research Council (ERC grant agreement 647038 [BIODESERT]); ADAPTAMED LIFE14 CCA/ES/000612 project; RH2O-ARID project (P18-RT-5130); RESISTE project (P18-RT-1927) funded by the Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento, Empresas y Universidad de la Junta de Andalucía;; A-TIC-458-UGR18 and DETECTOR (A-RNM-256-UGR18) projects, with the contribution of the European Funds for Regional Development; Generalitat Valenciana and the European Social Fund (APOSTD/2021/188); “Thematic Center on Mountain Ecosystem & Remote sensing, Deep learning-AI e-Services University of Granada-Sierra Nevada” (LifeWatch-2019-10-UGR- 01) project, which has been co-funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation through the FEDER funds from the Spanish Pluriregional Operational Program 2014–2020 (POPE), LifeWatch-ERIC action line, within theWorkpackages LifeWatch-2019-10-UGR-01_WP-8, LifeWatch-2019-10-UGR-01_WP-7, and LifeWatch-2019-10-UGR-01_WP-4Resumen
Wildfires affect the structure, functioning, and composition of ecosystems. Long-term
monitoring of the occurrence, abundance, and growth of plant species is key to assessing the responses
of the dynamics of plant populations with regard to environmental disturbances, such as wildfires.
In this work, we evaluated the changes in the number of individuals and the canopy cover extent
of a population of Juniperus communis L. during a four-decade period following a wildfire in a
Mediterranean high-mountain ecosystem (Sierra Nevada, Spain). To do this, we used object-based
image analysis (OBIA) applied to very high-resolution aerial images. Our study also provides a new
approach to optimize the shrub identification process and to semi-automatically evaluate the accuracy
of the number of shrubs and their canopy cover. From the 752 individuals present in 1977, only
433 remained immediately after a fire (1984), a few more disappeared one decade later (420 shrubs in
1997), while by 2008, the population had partially recovered to 578 shrubs. The wildfire decreased
juniper canopy cover from 55,000 m2 to 40,000 m2, but two decades later it had already recovered
to 57,000 m2. The largest shrubs were more resistant to fire than the smallest ones and recovered
in a shorter time period. The protection measures introduced with the park declaration seemed to
have contributed to the post-fire recovery. The potential of this methodology in the management and
conservation of biodiversity in the future is also discussed.